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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Excitonic bistability of GaAs/Ga 0.7 Al 0.3 As ridged waveguides

Vittorio Pellegrini, F. Fuso, E. Arimondo

Published Nov 19, 1993• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Transmission of dye laser light pulses through GaAs/Ga0.7Al0.3As ridged waveguides, with propagation parallel to the Multiple Quantum Wells (MQW) layer, was investigated. Single-mode optical fibers have been used both to deliver light into the waveguides and to collect the transmitted pulses. The obtained results show the appearance of bistable cycles for input intensities above 300 kW/cm2. Room temperature fluorescence was also investigated under 6328 angstrom irradiation observing HH1 and LH1 transitions.

DOI
10.1117/12.162774

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We report on the observations of a nonlinear optical response in the radiation pulses transmitted by a multiple-quantum-well GaAs/Alx{\mathrm{Al}}_{\mathit{x}}Alx​${\mathrm{Ga}}_{1\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathit{x}}$As sample with a ridged waveguide configuration obtained by chemical etching. The nonlinear response is investigated through optical hysteresis obtained by plotting the transmitted power versus the input power. The physical conditions are complementary to those that characterize previous experiments in the field of optical bistability in multiple-quantum-well structures. The numerical simulations, obtained using the first-principles approach previously developed by some of us [G. P. Bava, F. Castelli, P. Debernardi, and L. A. Lugiato, Phys. Rev. A 45, 5180 (1992)], are in satisfactory qualitative and semiquantitative agreement with the experimental data. The numerical simulations also prove that optical bistability could be observed in ridged waveguide samples using cw laser sources.
The temperature distribution in a GaAs/(Al,Ga)As multiple quantum well structure was measured with high lateral and temporal resolution while passing through the characteristic hysteresis loop of a thermally induced absorptive optical bistability. In a pump and probe beam experiment, the local transmission spectra of the quantum well structure were recorded and the temperature distribution in the sample was deduced from the spectral positions of characteristic exciton resonances. These resonances remain sufficiently sharp even far above room temperature to guarantee an accuracy of better than 3 K The experiment was conducted under both steady-state and dynamical conditions. The steady-state results were compared with numerical calculations, showing good agreement. The dependence of the relative width of the characteristic hysteresis on the environmental temperature of the bistable sample was investigated. A simple relaxation-time model of the bistability was shown to describe nicely the observed behaviour if the bleaching of the lowest exciton resonance due to high laser intensities is considered. Based on this dependence, a miniature temperature-sensing device using an optical fibre to guide the laser beam is presented.
The propagation of a laser pulse through a GaAs-GaAlAs MQW is investigated in the frame of classical optics. Optical spectra are calculated in the vicinity of the 1 s -exciton resonance of GaAs taking into account interference effects and nonlinear absorption caused by many-exciton effects at high excitation. The density of excited e-h pairs and intensities of transmitted and reflected beam are determined in dependence on the intensity of stationary incident laser beam by simultaneous solution of the problem of exciton diffusion and propagation of the electromagnetic wave. The observed strong nonlinearities refer to an optical bistable behaviour.